Got Social?

Magnets (on stepper motors) How do they work ?

What's next? Rainbows ?

I’m always a big fan of learning more about Why vs How . Once you understand what’s really happening inside the black box, you can interface with it better after you really know its needs. Siddharth is here to school you and teach you more about stepper motors. If you’re thinking about building things like robotic arms, or 3D printers you’ll most likely use a stepper motor. DC motors are good for most things, but stepper motors allow you to get accurate with your precise location while giving you lots of power at the same time.

This is one of those articles you need to bookmark for later when you are actually working on something using steppers. The diagrams showing the differences between 4/5/6 and 8 wire configurations, and Full step, half step and microstepping are going to be valuable to refer back to. I sware every time I hook up a 6 wire stepper to a 4 wire controller I have to google it each time.

Siddharth also has a follow-up article where he interfaces the stepper to a PIC microcontroller.